Arbitrator Rules Port Angeles School District Failed to Bargain Before Cutting Office Staff Hours

The Port Angeles School District should have bargained with its office professionals’ union before cutting secretarial hours as part of its 2025 budget reductions, an independent arbitrator has ruled, sustaining the union’s grievance and ordering the district to negotiate before any more bargaining unit work is moved out of the unit.

“I cannot find meaningful bargaining in this case,” arbitrator Kenneth James Latsch wrote in an award dated July 11, resolving a dispute between the district and the Port Angeles Educational Office Professionals, the union representing the district’s secretarial, data processing, and accounting employees.

The ruling caps a grievance that has been working its way through the contract’s dispute process for more than a year, and it lands as the district’s handling of staff reductions continues to draw public scrutiny.

Discovered the Day Before the Vote

The dispute traces back to May 7, 2025, when PAEOP President Anita Reynolds learned of an item on the agenda for the school board's regular meeting the following night. 

The item, titled “Budget Development; Reduced Education Program,” included an attachment labeled Board RIF Resolution 2425-15, which would direct the superintendent to lay off, reduce, reassign, and transfer staff to implement a reduced education program for the 2025–2026 school year.

An exhibit attached to the resolution proposed “Classified Staff Reductions” touching two PAEOP positions: eight hours from a Secretary (Business) position and two hours from a Secretary (Human Resources) position.

According to the award, Reynolds and PAEOP member Adam Purcell met with Human Resources Director Scott Harker and other district personnel after discovering the agenda item.

Purcell pointed to Article 8, Section 8.1 of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement, which requires that when the district determines PAEOP positions or hours are to be reduced or eliminated, the superintendent or a designee must notify the union, the district must provide a seniority list, and the superintendent or designee must review with the union president the procedures used to determine the impacted employees before any layoff. 

The contract also requires written notice to affected employees and the union at least 30 calendar days before a layoff.

When Purcell asked what notice the district had provided, Harker pointed to a comment made by then-Superintendent Martin Brewer at an April 23, 2025, union-management meeting, where the subject of potential staff reductions was raised. 

According to the award, there was no other reference to the issue and no other notice given to the union.

The school board approved the reductions on May 8, 2025, with the cuts scheduled to take effect September 1, 2025. PAEOP filed a Step 1 formal grievance on May 16, 2025, alleging the district violated Section 8.1 by failing to notify the union of the reductions. 

The parties could not resolve the dispute, and it proceeded to arbitration. Latsch, appointed by agreement of both parties, held an electronic hearing on January 20, 2026, and both sides submitted post-hearing briefs.

'Skimming' vs. Voluntary Moves

The two sides offered starkly different characterizations of what happened.

The district—represented at arbitration by attorney Nate L. Schmutz of the Tacoma firm Vandeberg Johnson Gandara—argued that Article 8 simply did not apply, because no employee was removed from the district's payroll. 

In the district’s telling, the changes flowed from two voluntary personnel moves: a business department employee who retired in May 2024, and another employee who voluntarily transferred from Human Resources to a Maintenance Department position, with two fewer hours, in October 2024. 

The district also argued it had a past practice of similar actions and that the union had failed to prove a contract violation.

PAEOP, represented by advocacy specialist Michael Boyer, countered that the practical effect of the district's actions amounted to a “skimming” of bargaining unit work. 

No members lost their jobs, the union acknowledged—but the underlying work was lost to the entire bargaining unit without proper notice or an opportunity to bargain over it. The union’s contract is explicit on the point, stating that all office professional duties are considered bargaining unit work.

Latsch sided with the union.

“I have reviewed the record and the supporting arguments submitted by the parties, and I must conclude that the Association is correct on this issue,” he wrote.

The arbitrator acknowledged that the underlying personnel actions were voluntary and that no one was removed from the bargaining unit. He also recognized that the district can make necessary personnel decisions. But those decisions, he found, carry a bargaining obligation—one the district did not meet.

The district’s mention of possible staff reductions at labor-management meetings, Latsch found, was “generic and not directed at any particular department or position.” 

Had the district zeroed in on the specific positions at issue, he wrote, the union would then have been responsible for raising the issue, and the parties could have engaged in good-faith bargaining—though neither side would have been compelled to make concessions.

“Unfortunately, we did not have such bargaining in this case,” Latsch wrote. “The Employer assumed that it gave the Association enough information about the matter and the Association responded by filing the instant grievance.”

The Remedy: No Rollback, But a Standing Obligation

While the grievance was sustained, the union did not get everything it asked for. 

PAEOP had originally sought to cancel the reduction in force entirely, retain the existing hours and positions, and obtain an order directing the district to cease unilateral changes to working conditions and the “outsourcing” of bargaining unit work. But in its closing brief, the union acknowledged it would be impractical to undo the personnel actions at this point—a position Latsch adopted.

Instead, the award orders the district to “commit to negotiate with the Association before any bargaining unit work is transferred out of the bargaining unit, whether by direct transfer or because of bargaining unit layoffs.”

“The Employer should now be on notice that it owe[s] a duty to bargain before bargaining unit work is removed,” Latsch wrote.

The arbitrator retained jurisdiction over the case for 60 days from the date of the decision in the event any disputes arise over the remedy.

A District Under Scrutiny

The award arrives amid a turbulent stretch for Port Angeles School District leadership.

The 2025 cuts at issue in the arbitration were adopted while Martin Brewer was superintendent. The district is now led by Superintendent Michelle Olsen, whose new 2026–2029 contract was approved by the board last month—at the same June 18 meeting where the board voted 4-1 to censure Director Nancy Hamilton over her information requests and transparency push.

Staff reductions have remained a flashpoint. The board’s censure resolution criticized Hamilton in part for saying she lacked sufficient information to vote on a more recent reduction in force—a separate action from the 2025 cuts at issue in the arbitration, and a dissenting vote that drew praise from community members during public comment.

As paraeducator Gwen Lewandowski told the board at the censure meeting, Hamilton’s no vote on cutting support staff was “exactly what the people of Port Angeles elected her to do.”

The arbitration award now adds an arbitrator-ordered obligation to that backdrop: before the district moves office professionals’ work out of the bargaining unit again—whether through layoffs or by transferring the work to others—it must first come to the table.